Mega Comics CheckList

– Dave Davison is the subject of Project: New Man, a partly secret joint venture of the U.S. Government and the Fortress Foundation, a private sector non-profit philanthropic organization dedicated to public defense and scientific research. Dave has the dual role of being part of the research project and at the same time being groomed by the Government as a public protector in the Five Lakes Megalopolis area. Dave has a dark past which he hoped was dead and buried but in his first public adventure he confronts his past and an old partner head on in “The Mall Massacres”. Legacy Comics 1991 Black and White 32 page Independent Comic: Project: New Man #1is FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– His actual identity is as much a mystery as what drives him. He calls himself Ebenezer Baal, and he is The Haunted Man but he intends for misery to have company as he in turn haunts Dave Davison a.k.a New Man. We find out in this origin tale Dave was not always a hero, and it seems his past is easily as shady as the criminals he now pursues! Co-Starring The Thunder Hawks! The backup story from Legacy Comics 1991 Black and White 64 page Independent Comic: Humants #1! FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– Dave Davison A.K.A New Man goes out for a morning jog only to return to the Moriah Building under a full scale attack from Cyber-Tech! Also featuring Bearcat, and the Thunder Hawks! Featuring lots of never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– We tie up a lot of loose ends in this issue as The Haunted Man concludes. We find out the true identity of Ebeneezer Baal, see Bearcat in action again, see the abduction of Fawn and Nick, Cyber-Tech escapes plus a special secret surprise guest-star! Yeah! This one has it all!Featuring lots of never before published and some ALL-NEW material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– High crime rates, higher gas prices, inflation and garbage strikes, are one thing but the recent unnatural storms have the residents Five Lakes Megalopolis rattled. Then the appearance of unusual individuals wielding supernatural powers precede the coming of a walking, flying nightmare! His name is Megeddon, Dark Lord of the Hecati and his chief servant, the powerhouse called Devastax! Krystal McKliston is an investigative reporter looking into these mysteries as she learns there are “Humants Among Us!”The lead story from Legacy Comics 1991 Black and White 64 page Independent Comic: Humants #1! FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– The Herald, Magistar, and Man Ark must enter into deadly battle with Megeddon, the Dark Lord of the Hecati and his chief servant, the powerhouse called Devastax! Their goal: no less than total world destruction! Krystal McCliston, investigative reporter, tries to capture the action on video while dodging falling debris. She later comfronts a new villain: The Tower! Janeta Rosebud meets Omni Spawn and things will never again be the same! The lead story from Legacy Comics 1992 Black and White 48 page Independent Comic: Humants #2! FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– Omnispawn ushers in yet another Humant: The Savage Chaosta! Also having survived their first encounter with the evil Dark Lord Mageddon, the Khosmotic Warriors have banded together and rented an old warehouse to use as a headquarters and training facility. Featuring lots of never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– This issue features the all out war between the Humants and the Renegade Humants! It's action from cover to cover as Freazie White, Jr. writes and does finished pencils over Mark Poe's layouts and we introduce a new inker, Paul Schulze! Featuring lots of never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– What happens when you try to administer first aid to an unconscious Humant? Well, in the case of Chaosta things could get pretty scary when she wakes up and thinks she is still battling the Renegade Humants! Man Ark and Sojourner find a lot of trouble for their efforts! Plus: Much More by Freazie White, Jr. new inker, Anthony Grayand Billy Leavell with Letters and Edits! PLUS: An offbeat Bearcat backup tale! By Mark Poe, Freazie White, Jr., Mark Alan Lester and Billy Leavell! Featuring lots of never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– Tess is a young lady who is a living tesseract. She comes from another dimension and in our dimension she can teleport herself or just about anything else just about any where. She manifests the power in a number of ways other than teleportation and she has a cute little 4th dimensional dog with a very high I.Q. named Nostradamus. In short: we are 3D beings, Tess and Nostradamus are 4D beings.Plus: Much More by Greg Legat writer/creator, Mark Poe with pencils, letters and colors! and J. Adam Walters handling inking embellishment. Featuring never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

Watch for more coming soon!

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Posts Tagged ‘Monica Rambeau’

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Last week we gave you the low-down on Alpha-Omega and Comics APA’s in general. This is a follow up to that info.

Alpha-Omega # 200

It began back in the 1980’s…

March 1985 to be exact. Some of the initial members had been in other APA’s, buy many like Mark Poe, our resident publisher in training, had never been part of such a group. He had read lots of fanzines some of which gave the background of APAs, Amateur Press Associations. He says he can’t remember where he heard about Alpha-Omega but, most likely, it was either an article or ad in one of those fanzines. That was 33 years ago! Now with the next A-O, due out in may, the APA celebrates it’s 200th Mailing Issue! A lot of APA’s only make it a few years or in some cases a few months before ceasing distribution for one reason or another. A few like Kappa-Alpha, which we told you about last week, go on for years. Alpha-Omega is in that class.

Hi! As some of you may know, I’m not posting here online that often because so much of my time is involved offline with Alpha-Omega, the Christian Comic Arts Society’s long-running Christian comics APA (which stands for Amateur Press Association.)

For those who don’t know what an APA is, there’s a Wikipedia article on the history of the concept. It’s basically a short-run, members-only fanzine that works sort of like a pre-internet equivalent of a private discussion forum, bulletin board and blog, printed out and shipped back and forth through regular postal mail. Each member of the APA produces their own mini-zine (called “contributions”, or “tribs” for short), mails their ‘trib to the group’s “Central Mailer”, who then collates and combines the individual ‘tribs into complete photocopied/stapled issues of the APA-zine which is then mailed back out to all participating members, who then are generally expected to review/critique/comment on each other’s work in the following issue. It’s a much slower paced (and given the cost of photocopies and postage, much more expensive) alternative to the free and instantaneous fellowship available through modern online forums and social media, but it tends to provide an outlet for a different set of creative muscles and provides a different style of feedback and fellowship.

So, if you’ve never heard of an APA before and would be interested in joining, you can talk to Ralph Miley (the current “Editor” of our APA, who coordinates stuff between members) or myself (the current “Central Mailer”, who physically assembles and mails each issue) to find out more.

However! This blog post isn’t specifically about recruiting new members. What I’m trying to do is spread the word to former alumni members of our group and let them know that the Alpha-Omega APAzine will be celebrating its 200th issue this year! Ralph and I are trying to contact and invite all our many alumni members to participate in this upcoming special anniversary issue!

(Additional Note: I originally wrote this post with former Alpha-Omega members in mind, but the invitation to participate is open to other friends and supporters of the Christian comics movement as well. Contact us if you’re interested!) – Kevin

And so, I hereby present: The official AO#200 participation Q&A!

Who are we looking for? If you’ve been a member of the Alpha-Omega APA at any point during our past 30+ years, we’d love to see you back in our pages for this anniversary special. We have been trying to reach out and contact former members via our last known contact info from back issues of A-O, but many of us have moved and/or changed email providers in the years since we first joined. That’s why I’m making a more public announcement here on the CCAS site, to get the word out more easily. (This invitation is also open to any other friends and supporters in the Christian comics movement who want to celebrate with us.)

Who to contact? Ralph Miley is our main coordinator for this project. Kevin Yong is the Central Mailer who is compiling all the ‘tribs and will be formatting the book for print. If you don’t have our contact info already, drop me an email and we’ll follow up!

What’s the plan? Alpha-Omega #200 will be a special issue featuring content from our past and current members, as well as from friends and supporters within the Christian comics movement. We envision the book as a “best of” tribute to our past 33+ years of APAzine fellowship, and a celebration of both Christian comics and Christian comics fandom.

The book will be printed as a squarebound trade paperback using print-on-demand, and in addition to copies being printed for participants, the book will later be available for sale at Amazon.com to the general public. (Any money eventually raised from sales of the book will go back towards funding Alpha-Omega and the CCAS.)

Deadline? The 200th issue will be dated May/June 2018. The deadline for contributing for the issue will be May 7th, and the printed issue will be sent out (Lord willing) by late May.

Costs? As an all-volunteer APAzine, the costs of printing this issue will be paid for out of pocket by the participants. We estimate a printed copy will cost somewhere around $5, plus postage, depending on the final page count.

For those alumni who want to be a part of AO #200 but who don’t want to purchase a physical copy, we’ll work on creating a free digital PDF version to be available for all participants.

What we’re looking for. The length of your ‘trib is up to you. You can submit anything from a full length ‘trib to a single page of congratulatory artwork in the tradition of those Comic-Con “Souvenir Books”. Our theme for this issue is “Celebrating Christian Comics Fandom”.

Ideas for ‘tribs

A “Best of” collection of your past Alpha-Omega content. Do you have essays, reviews, artwork or writing from your past time in A-O that you would like to see reprinted? Also, If you previously wrote content for the CCAS 25th Anniversary book, we can reprint your essays/memoirs from there as well!

You can share your own personal memories or experiences with the Christian comics movement, or updates on what you have been involved with since you were last in AO. (But don’t forget that this book will have a wider audience than normal, so don’t go into more personal detail than you would be comfortable sharing on a public forum.)

Feel free to share and promote your own work. Members of our group has produced a lot of content over the years, but much of it was in the form of small-press indie comics from the pre-internet era and so many of our comics may still be largely unknown to wider audiences. Let people know what you’ve worked on, and how to find it!

Artwork in the “Congratulations on 200 issues!” tradition of those ubiquitous Comic-Con Souvenir Books. Artwork can feature your own characters, or if you want a “mascot” character for AO, you can do a tribute using The Golden Protector — a Christian superhero created by Don Ensign, the co-founder of A-O & the CCAS who passed away a few years ago. (Reference art available if needed.)

What not to include

Personal contact info. If you’re a creator who wants to promote your website, social media or email, great! Go for it! But it’s probably not a good idea to share your home address and phone number, since extra copies of this “best of” book will eventually be available for sale to the general public.

Mailing comments. These are usually the lifeblood of an APA, but this issue will have many new one-time readers, so mailing comments referencing any specific back issue content will be needlessly confusing. Save it for next time, regulars!

Serialized stories. Like above, don’t share “Chapter 2 of 5” or start a teaser cliffhanger that will never be resolved for our guest readers. Let’s stick to standalone stories this issue.

Copyrighted material. Feel free to share any of your own art and writing, but avoid photocopying articles or artwork from elsewhere.

All our usual AO content restrictions apply: no graphic sex/violence/objectionable content, no personal insults, no inter-denominational arguments, no political flame-wars.

Copyrights You will retain all copyright ownership of your individual content. By submitting your work for this issue, you are granting Alpha-Omega/CCAS a nonexclusive right to publish it as part of this 200th issue compilation anthology.

This standard disclaimer will be included in the front page of the book: “The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual creators, and do not necessarily reflect the Christian Comic Arts Society or the Alpha-Omega Amateur Press Association as a whole. The copyright for all contents of this anthology are the property of their respective creators, and are printed here with permission.”

How to send your ‘trib: The book will be 8.5” x 11”, B&W. Try to design your pages accordingly.

Also please include your own copyright notices if you want to be more specific than our generic AO disclaimer listed above.

If you can send your ‘trib digitally, send it to Kevin via email or by using a file sharing upload site like Dropbox. PDF is the preferred file format (Word Documents can be used if absolutely necessary, but we can make no guarantees that the formatting will remain consistent.)

If you prefer to create your ‘trib in hardcopy form, you can mail us one clean set of B&W pages for your ‘trib, and we will scan it as needed for the final book. You can mail your hardcopy pages to:

Kevin Yong

P.O. Box 254

Temple City, CA 91780

Contact Ralph and Kevin to RSVP if you’re interested. If you don’t already have our contact info, you can send us an email and one of us will follow-up. God bless!”

We didn’t talk a lot about the Christian Comic Arts Society. But we included some stunning art from their website. The CCAS is the mother organization which ushered A-O into the world. We’re out of space so we can’t tell you any more about the CCAS but here you have the link if you want to check out their web site.

Mark’s Remarks:

Since my first contribution to the Amateur Press Association (APA) called Alpha-Omega was number 2, I guess that makes me like a founding member, or at least close to it. I’m an alumni if nothing else. Many APAs over the years only lasted for a short period of time, months or maybe a year or two. Most of time it was due to strife inside the ranks, or a lack of sustained interest.

Alpha-Omega could have gone the same way. The early days were controversial at times but most of the time everyone got along. Even though we had established guidelines which were well written there are always gray areas where rules are concerned. Some members would push the envelope to try these guidelines on purpose. Others would find themselves in violation of a guideline unintentionally. I was one who found himself in the latter group. In any group, whether it’s Christian or some other discipline, there will be some members who are more tolerant than others. A few older members had problems with my art and in particular the way I had depicting females. It wasn’t that I was drawing naked ladies or anything, but one member thought my super powered character, Beth Champion a.k.a. Laser was naked in my very first trib showing a drawing of her flying! She wasn’t naked, of course. When Beth manifested her power of transforming into living light (Yeah, I had the idea before Monica Rambeau, Marvel’s secondCaptain Marvel) I depicted her transformation much like the Human Torch was always shown in the ’70’s. My drawings of Laser, like those of the Torch, revealed her form as if she were wearing a skin tight costume without seams. I was naive to say the least. I recall reading that one of Stan Lee‘s concerns in artists drawing the Silver Surfer in the ’60’s was his seamless “costume” as Jack Kirby designed it originally. That’s why he had Jack and others add the lines indicating trunks in subsequent appearances after the character debuted in Fantastic Four #48. Now, back to my character, Laser. Once it was pointed out I could see how my intentions could be misconstrued. In my defense, I had grown up in the ’70’s with comics which had become more and more unrestrained in it’s depiction of sex and the human form. Artists were gravitating more and more toward the realistic style of Neal Adams, Jim Starlin and others. Comics artists of that era were discovering the Sexual Revolution so anything went, and often the first thing was as much clothing as possible especially where the females were concerned! Not an unusual development for artists of any era, mind you. 😉 But I recognized the problem and determined to adhere more closely to the A-O Guidelines. You can see the results in this last drawing which appeared a few Mailing Issues later in A-O. Now instead of Beth Champion’s form adhering to the human female form as it would be depicted without cloths, or a skin tight costume, she would appear to radiate light in a clothed form, as the outlines shows here. Problem solved!

I have to say, at the time, I resented the adjustment but I humbled myself and realized it was for the better and was actually a more realistic solution for the character, who was suppose to be a more realistic version of a super powered human than the traditional super-hero. As the old saying goes, “Live and learn.”

I was not the only one who learned from his mistakes. Almost every member of A-O had to humble themselves at one time or another to adjust to different viewpoints which made up the group. We were all Christians with different denominational backgrounds, so even though we shared fundamental basic beliefs we varied on a lot of topics. However, we grew together and learned to bend and understand a little. I think this is one of the primary reasons why A-O has lasted 33 years and is about to have its 200th Mailing Issue. Not bad, eh? 😉

Archives Spotlight

Archive’s Spotlight is designed to look at all which has come before and add new comments as well. This posting we are reviewing Project New Man 3 Page 20-21!

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Project: New Man #3 – Page 20-21– Once again we have made more changes in the art mainly in the backgrounds and specifically in the simulated Duo-Shade tones used to produce the black and white pages of Project: NewMan #3.

Pages 20 and 21 was all we had time to do this week. As was the case with page 19 there was no background halftones originally on these two pages either. Those were the first pages by Chris Torres and Mark Poe which were reproduced straight form the original inked art with no additional halftones. The scans of pages 19 through 32 for Project NewMan # 3 were of better quality than the old Duo-Shade boards from the previous chapter. These art boards were regular Bristol board without the emulsion shading. But thanks to the wonders of Photoshop we can simulate the shading as we did in repairing the previous pages which were done on the Duo-Shade boards.

As usual, since beginning these revisions we are posting a couple of examples here which show what it looked like before and results after the adjustments. There are other minor art adjustments to these pages too. See how much of a sharp eyed art critic you are by identifying all the changes.

The original digital scans of these pages were done 10 years or more back. Adobe Photoshop and some of the other programs we use to clean up the images and add the effects, make corrections and changes have evolved a lot in that time. We can do a lot more with the scans now than we could 10 years ago. It sure beats the old school way we did these pages back in the early ’90’s!

Check back next week for more pages inPNM #3 as we continue updating these books for printing with Ka-Blam Comic Book Printing and digital sales at IndyPlanet as well as DriveThru Comics.

Remember, we have digital editions at IndyPlanet and DriveThru Comics RIGHT NOW! You can still download Project: NewMan #1 and Humants # 1 for absolutely FREE!Project: NewMan # 2 and Humants # 2 can be downloaded now, for immediate gratification, for a mere 99ç each! And if you want actual hard copy prints the Indyplanet will sale those to you for only $2.99 each! And we also have Mega Tales #1 featuring the debut of the other long ago project Mark and Greg Legat did called Tess, The Living Tesseract.

What are you waiting for? Go grab some Mega Comics Group / Legacy Comics right now! Check out the cover link to the left here which will take you to Indy Planet. Here’s the link if you had rather got to DriveThru Comics.